Wind power is an incredibly efficient, clean source of energy—and it’s one that has been in use for a very long time. As a result, nearly everywhere around the globe it is possible to see wide open spaces dotted with wind turbines providing electricity to the grid.

As more and more power generation companies around the world are exploring ways to add additional renewable generation to their portfolios, wind turbines are among the most appealing options. However, as Thomas Andersen explains in his recent article in Windpower Engineering,

“Constructing new turbines can often be costly, complex, and time consuming. Long gone are the days when a utility could simply select a flat patch of land and install a new wind asset. Today, increasing regulation makes it difficult—and, in some cases, impossible—to build new turbines in many areas.”

Fortunately, there is an alternative option to building new turbines. Today, many power generation companies looking to expand their renewable energy portfolios with wind power are leveraging the wind infrastructure that is already in place by acquiring existing assets to operate a portfolio of both new and existing turbines. To help manage these expansive networks of assets, the most effective companies are leveraging fit-for-purpose green energy software portfolios that provide centralized supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software and wind turbine condition monitoring systems.

Different systems, added complexity

One of the key issues that comes from acquiring a wide array of different wind turbines is that each farm likely has many different types of assets, each running its own control system. In fact, even multiple turbines of the same brand but different vintages can have different control software, making operators’ jobs very difficult.

“If the control systems cannot be interconnected, which is common with systems from different OEMs, operators will need to travel between turbines to access the control systems and make changes. Not only does that waste a significant amount of time, but it also makes operations more complex to standardize and document. Moreover, operators will need to learn a wide variety of control interfaces to be effective and efficient in the field, and they will have to collect data manually, necessitating complex manual calculations to track and trend performance.”

Even if operators learn every control system necessary to manage each turbine, data will still be siloed in individual systems, making it much more difficult to operate the plant as a cohesive whole.

Condition monitoring improves insights

One of the first steps most organizations perform as they incorporate aging assets into their fleet is to add Emerson’s wind turbine condition monitoring software (CMS). The software helps monitor the performance and reliability of aging assets, using real-time data to quickly pinpoint the root cause of an issue before it escalates – enabling faster, more informed decisions.

In fact, one of the main advantages of Emerson’s CMS is its ability to unlock the black box inside nearly every model of wind turbine available, dramatically increasing the number of available data points for fleet assets.

“CMS solutions from providers with decades of wind industry expertise can unlock thousands of data points and deliver actionable insights—not just the dense and complex raw data—providing decision support and analysis, without incurring a fee each time.”

One system to rule them all

Emerson’s Ovation™ Green renewable asset management and SCADA software helps companies cut through the complexity of managing a wide variety of assets across their fleet. Not only does Ovation Green software bring a company’s assets into a single application for easier management and data acquisition, but it can also improve operational excellence.

“Feedback from a seamlessly integrated CMS and green energy SCADA system can also optimize daily operations, helping teams adjust those operations to extend the life of assets and avoid the added cost of expediting unplanned service. Many teams also use the actionable information they identify in their integrated solution to improve planned outage preparation. A team that knows what needs to be done going into an outage can ensure it has the right parts, people, and equipment to do the necessary work correctly the first time.”

Efficient operations are more important than ever. The good news is that power generators can capture efficiency while simultaneously taking advantage of the assets they already have. Emerson’s Ovation renewable energy software and turbine control system retrofits can bring those assets together, regardless of type and/or vintage, helping operators drive peak performance from their fleets.